I was interested in what Mark was saying about the cost of software. My experience is that incredibly powerful software is available either for free or for very little expense. The problems - costs with software tend to be a matter of getting it fully installed and learning what you can do with it. I bought Hip Hop E-jay out of a bargain box a few months bank and was astonished at the results it produced - even though it is a childishly simple programme to operate. In fact I discovered that I had bought an earlier implementation of it to try out on my children's game console - and I had given up on it mistakenly thinking that it was much too elementary to be of use to a "serious" musician.

The difficulty with software is moderating the rate at which one acquires it so that one stays up with the game reasonably cheaply but doesnt have to spend too much time fiddling about with it to see what it will do.

Just now I feel a frustration in terms of outside "demands" and and finding the time to dig deeper. I was interested in Robin's description of her day in terms of keeping the show on the road - also Mark's difficulties with client requirements. Of course its tempting to think that some other arrangement of income generation/time management would deliver a better result - but I think this is often illusory.

I am going to have to change things around in the next few months come what may. I think I will be glad to leave regular rail commuting to London behind - �200 and up to 60 hours a month for discomfort and frustration plus an opportunity to listen to some CDs. I find I am spending more and more on magazines and drinks to help make the journey time more bearable.

A lot of people have suggested that I should professionalise my music-making but I am fairly ambivalent about that.

There a couple of performances coming up. The first is next Wednesday - only a few pieces to be played, possible in the open air - either solo or as a duet with Peter Crowther if he is free. Peter and I first started working as a duo nearly 30 years ago.

The following Sunday there is an event with a quartet - Peter and I are joined by a French Horn player who plays with a good local semi professional orchestra and a retired music teacher on keyboards who has a good feel for ad hocery. I mostly play flute - which is an interesting blend with the FrHn. The repertoire comes from an ecumenical monsatery in northern France and is pretty remarkable in terms of a small group of people having thought of a way of music making and this then having spread and developed very widely.

I was first introduced to it by Gillian Lloyd who lives up the hill from me and who taught my children basic music making. She and her husband are very into organs - so much so that they build them. Then I went to a workshop which Gillian organised with someone who had been to the monsatery and I realised how far some people were prepared to take the approach. Certainly at souce the music is generated by very very large groups - maybe a thousand people. There can also be groups which relish quite large departures from the basic pattern. If I am asked I say that the genre is somewhere between certain kinds of minimalism, folkrock and modal jazz. Anyway I have to plan that day carefully as I am hoping to get to Merton Abbey the same afternoon as we rehearse and perform.

If you put Merton Abbey into google there's an interesting site run by a local architect. Its only in the last ten years that people have realised that a supermarket now sits on the site of a place where Kings and Queens were once crowned.